Skydancer: Legend of the Dragon's Claw
by watchingpaintdry
Summary: Jack was having a no good very bad day. It had started badly, and it seemed to be ending badly too, and that was before she had been kidnapped and dumped in an abandoned smelting warehouse full of giant, captive, alien robots.


X-X-X-X-X

X-X-X-X-X

Swindle was having a no-good-very-bad-day. It had started badly, and seemed to be ending badly.

He had woken from recharge on the wrong side of the berth, literally, and promptly fell off of it when he tried to move. How was still a mystery to him, but he was still sporting dents from the surprisingly hard floor. Secondly, the minicon in front of him in line had taken the last of the energon from the dispenser machine, he had been tripped by another minicon later that Joor, and had fallen off of Starscream's shoulder in the middle of that morning's meeting.

It had only gone downhill from there. While picking himself up from his ungraceful fall of two-and-a-half stories, the wall had exploded, strange little organic people had swarmed through the newly made hole, and had thrown some strange liquidy goop on him, making him offline.

When he had next awoken, he was in a bubble. Yes, a bubble. The little thing was too small and he felt claustrophobic, but he had been let out by one of the squishy organics, only to be pocked with strange little buzzing things that gave him an almost painful jolt when they touched him. He was now sitting with the other dozen or so minicons, all squished together in a small group. He was uncomfortable, hungry, and getting seriously annoyed with his partner, who had done nothing but bitch and complain about his "mistreatment" from the humans. Swindle, like almost everyone else in the room, knew he was only blowing off steam, silently berating himself for being captured by a handful of creatures that barely reached his knee.

However, he and the other minicons had been growing increasingly nervous over the last few minutes. They could feel something coming, something that approached them with evil and hatred, a malicious thing.

Something whose power overshadowed even Unicron's.

X-X-X-X-X

Jack Constantine was having a no-good-very-bad-day. It had started badly, and it seemed to be ending badly.

She had woken to the rather unpleasant sight of her cat's butt in her face, had proceeded to freak out, and had somehow gotten tangled in the sheets, falling, rather ungracefully, out of bed. When she had finally untangled herself, her cat, Doc, was sitting on the window sill, blinking yellow eyes at her smugly as she grumbled obscene things under her breathe.

She had then had the unpleasant surprise of discovering she was out of coffee. After another few minutes filled with colorful swearing, she had tripped on the edge of the carpet, falling into the wall on her way down, banged her knee on the corner of her coffee table, nearly smashed her fingers in her front door as she closed it, and almost tripped down the front stairs as she proceeded to walk to the Starbucks on the corner.

It had only gotten worse from there. The coffee shop was crowded, filled with chatting business people on Bluetooth headsets, crying children, something she detested even worse than barking dogs, and old men in walkers that seemed to take up half the store with their metal frames, all the while yelling thing like "Huh?" and "What?" at the top of their lungs. Then, when she finally got to the counter, there was a new employee at the register who had no idea how to work it at all, and somehow managed to screw up her order, even though she repeated it for him four times. He then proceeded to overcharge her, smirking blatantly while he did it, then called for the next person in line, a burly man in a trench coat that elbowed Jack out of the way before she could protest.

She had almost made it to the door with her scalding hot drink in hand, when a woman came running in from the other side, knocking Jack over in her haste to cut in front of everyone in line, yelling about being late for a business meeting while she nearly smacked a poor man upside the head with her flailing handbag, even as Jack glared at her from the door, picking her coffee covered self up off the floor and proceeding to head home, determined to go back to bed, as the universe appeared to be conspiring against her.

However, no sooner had she shed her clothes and donned fresh ones when the doorbell rang. Sighing in exasperation, Jack opened the door, only to have two strange men in gas masks abduct her from her doorstep, Doc complaining from the kitchen over his empty food bowl.

When she had come to, her first impression was that she was on a movie set. Or maybe they had given her some funky drugs, because she could have sworn she was looking at a room of giant, captive metal robots, all moving, talking, grumbling, complaining, and generally causing a distinct murmur of chaos, all on their own. Either the animatronics were space age, or life had just gotten freakier than it had been before that morning.

Not that her life had ever been "normal."

However, she had little time to dwell on theories before an involuntary shiver ran up her spine. She knew this power, this distinct hatred. It had haunted her since birth, and she knew it like her own skin. So it came as no surprise that, when she turned to the burly, blonde man with the ponytail and the smirk, who was obviously playing "leader" for the day, that she saw him holding a glass case with a strange, warped silver-metal hand resting in the center of it.

The Dragon's Claw.

X-X-X-X-X

Don was having a fantastic day. Not only had his boss just died of "natural" causes, but he had managed to acquire an interesting artifact, possibly of value, some strange metal beings who walked and talked of their own accord, and the woman who had been rumored to last possess the funny metal hand in the glass case, and who was now glaring at him with murder in her eyes.

Yes, a fantastic day indeed.

X-X-X-X-X

Alexis stared at the whole scene with interest. Not only had the Autobots been abducted and detained, but the Decepticons as well. The minicons were off in their own little group, and a few of the strange men were dragging a woman in through the only door.

Alexis couldn't help but stare.

The woman, maybe in her late teens, had striking molten-silver eyes and gunmetal grey hair that reached her mid-back. She was short, or, at least, shorter than the man waving the glass case with the funny metal hand around over his head. She was wearing a work shirt and jeans, and Alexis could smell coffee from all the way across the room.

The blonde man sneered, and then backhanded the woman.

X-X-X-X-X

"Jack Constantine." He smirked, leering down at her, his uneven yellow teeth causing her to wrinkle her nose in disgust.

"Do I know you?" she asked, seemingly unafraid of the strange men and the giant robots.

Don brandished the metal hand.

"We found this, we don't know what it is, but we hear you do. Put it on." There was dead silence for several seconds.

"No." the finality of the statement was not lost on Don; he knew when someone was absolute in their decisions. She had just made it perfectly obvious she would be uncooperative.

"What? I said 'put it on.'"

"No." she repeated, enunciating the word quite clearly.

Don, angry and frustrated, raised his voice, shouting as he backhanded her again.

"Do what I say!" he yelled.

"Go to HELL!" she yelled straight back in his face, defiance in her eyes as she struggled back onto her feet. Someone had removed her shackles earlier.

She would rather die then wear it again.

The scars on her right arm were enough, she needed no more reminders.

X-X-X-X-X


End file.
